“Food security is an extremely strong argument against bringing back set-aside at any level,” Mr Kendall said.

And Hertfordshire farmer Robert Law, who was an early adopter of the ELS scheme on his farm near Royston, said the red tape involved in establishing set-aside would threaten the uptake of stewardship schemes.

Mr Law has been involved in set-aside discussion groups with Natural England, the agency that administers environment schemes.

“We might find that we have three schemes, ELS, Higher Level Stewardship Scheme and set-aside, running in one field.

“It will be confusing, time consuming, costly and could ultimately be bad for wildlife if people ditch ELS,” he said.